Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Episode 3. “Paying attention to things — it's how we show love.” In “Long, Long Time,” the third episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, Frank (Murray Bartlett) makes this argument to Bill (Nick Offerman) in the context of paint colors meant to liven up their isolated neighborhood. But throughout the years of their post-apocalyptic love story, from its meet-not-quite-cute to its devastating but beautiful final rest, paying attention becomes key to their individual experiences of the end of the world, to their time facing it together, and to the show as a whole. Time and again, it's the cared-for little things that prove there is still life, love, and connection to be found in The Last of Us’s desolation, and that (to quote Station Eleven, another deep-feeling post-pandemic show), survival is insufficient.

When this third episode begins, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are in the woods, en route to the mysterious Frank and Bill’s house on Tess’s (Anna Torv) dying instructions. Joel won’t — can’t — say much about the loss of his partner; Ellie is delighted to be in the woods, seeing the wreckage of a plane and hearing about things her FEDRA-backed school kept secret. But when they come upon a government mass grave, the carefully swaddled skeleton of a baby brings us back to the early days of the crisis. The baby’s mother cradles her child gently, wrapping them in a rainbow-patterned cloth; attention has been paid to this child’s cheer and comfort even as they’re loaded onto a government truck to what we know will be a tragic end. But instead of following its doomed passengers, we turn to Bill, a survivalist in a bunker who successfully evades capture, turns the town’s gas back on, and sets himself up for a very comfortable, very well-fortified, and very alone life at the end of the world.

Bill Learns That Being Alone and Surviving Just Is Not Enough

Bill looking to his right with an annoyed expression in The Last of Us.
Image via HBO

But four years in, his plans are disrupted when one of his traps catches not a stray infected but Frank, a man just trying to make it to Boston. Against his better judgment, Bill lets Frank in, then lets him eat and shower, and then lets him stay for the title’s long, long time. The episode details a post-apocalyptic love story both through major milestones and the comfortable everyday mundanity that makes a life. Frank changes Bill from a lonely loner into a protector; Bill gives Frank a home and the space to do more than just stay alive. Paying attention to things allows them to show their love to each other, but also to remind them, and us, what’s worth surviving for.

While they learn to pay attention to each other, Bill and Frank do this in their own ways even before they first embrace. Frank is attuned to details from the moment he arrives, whether it’s a crack about Arby’s lack of free lunches or the antique piano in Bill’s living room. His paintings, which fill the walls ever more vibrantly as the years pass, are detailed depictions of flowers, of Bill’s eyes, of the world around him. He cultivates plants for joy and pleasure rather than sustenance — flowers and strawberries thrive under Frank’s careful and attentive hand. Frank shows his love for the world, and hangs onto his joyous humanity, by paying attention to its details.

For his part, Bill’s stubborn isolation and survivalism are never devoid of detail and care. His extensive knowledge of survivalist techniques, of infrastructure and construction, of guns and ammo, is all in the service of something meaningful. He cooks beautiful food, not just what he needs to survive. He takes pleasure in good wine and Linda Ronstadt. His pre-apocalypse life was as lonely as his post-apocalypse one is, but it wasn’t joyless; he pays attention to the details that bring him a measure of happiness where he can find it, and to the details that help him preserve that happiness. In his own way, it’s how he shows love to himself when he thinks no one else will.

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Bill and Frank Find a Way to Thrive With Each Other

Murray Bartlett as Frank playing the piano while Nick Offerman as Bill watches in The Last of Us Episode 3
Image via HBO 

Together, Bill and Frank transcend the immediate need to just survive by paying attention to the details that will make their shared life beautiful. From the very beginning of their long, long song, they are in tune with each others’ delicate notes. It’s why Bill lowers his literal and emotional defenses to Frank, knowing through careful observation that he can be trusted. It’s in Frank’s immediate reading of Bill — “these aren’t you,” he rightly says of the music in the piano bench after just a few mostly wordless hours. When Frank butchers the Ronstadt song that gives the episode its title, Bill’s gentle interpretation both reinforces his attention to detail and reveals his heart of hearts to the watchful Frank. Their instant connection isn’t mystical; it’s the result of careful observation, of paying attention to each others’ nuances as full human beings, not simply a threat, a savior, or animals scrambling to survive. By paying attention, even before their first kiss, they are showing their love for humanity, however out of tune and out of practice it may be.

Once they make a life together, this careful attention is what helps their relationship bloom and grow. Bill dutifully waters Frank’s flowers, which for so long he saw as an extravagance but now bring joy and color both on their own and as manifestations of the man Bill loves. Bill knows what makes an ailing Frank’s feet turn blue. Even on his last day, Frank wants to dress Bill up in a carefully curated outfit. For their last dinner, Bill remembers and lovingly prepares the first meal they ever shared. And it’s not only in the beautiful details — Bill also writes out detailed security instructions and plans for Frank in the event of his death, and Frank listens and responds intently to Bill even as he’s frantically attending to his nearly mortal wounds. Bill does the same for Joel before he and Frank go to bed for the last time. He pays attention to the nuts and bolts of survival, for those around him as well as himself, so that they can all have the chance at a full and fulfilling life.

The Last of Us Plants Details and Rewards Viewers Who Are Paying Attention

Nick Offerman as Bill and Murray Bartlett as Frank in The Last of Us Episode 3 as old men
Image via HBO

But while the loving action of paying attention is most clearly present in Bill and Frank’s relationship, it’s also true in less obvious ways through Joel. His attention to detail is what keeps him (and until recently, Tess) alive in dangerous situations. But it is a source of pain: his inattention to detail, ironically, saved him and his daughter from infection, but it haunts him now — he remembers with a pang the pancake mix he forgot to bring his daughter; he wears the watch she fixed for him. Where paying attention to the little things enriches Frank and Bill’s life, it reminds Joel of what he’s lost, and poking at that pain is his own way of loving when every other way seems lost. But while he is stuck in survival mode, even he can’t help but notice the ailing flowers at Bill and Frank’s and know what they portend for his not-quite-friend.

For all the ways that paying attention deepens the lives of its characters, it rewards us in the audience too, as the show consistently plants details that flower with careful viewing. Neither Bill nor Frank make a big show about the mirrored final meal; it’s just there for us, a gift for the audience as much as for Frank. Tess’s assurances at their first meeting that of all the people on the radio, she and Joel are “decent people” is in direct contrast to her insistence to Ellie in Episode 2 that “not good people,” giving detail-minded viewers a glimpse into how hard the ensuing years have been on her. More than how they see themselves, it’s how Frank sees them; we know he is a good and observant judge of character, and he loves Tess (and so, in his way, does Bill).

Pedro Pascal as Joel and Anna Torv as Tess sitting side by side in The Last of Us.
Image via HBO

If we are paying attention, then, we know that there was something worth loving in both Tess and Joel, something that is still in there, buried under years of surviving rather than living. In carefully building this web of detail, the storytelling deepens, staying above the level of misery porn and visceral horror to become something more rewarding and, strangely, even gentler for its audience. Paying attention is a way for the show to invite emotional connection with the viewers, even amid the horror and bleakness — to make it worth loving these people even as we know we might lose them.

But back to those strawberries. They are so hard to grow from seed; I’ve tried and failed three years in a row with every creature comfort and the full power of the internet at my disposal. But Frank managed it with rudimentary tools and his loving attention, coaxing them from the ground, dotting his and Bill’s private paradise with ruby red, their sweetness eliciting childlike giggles from the man he shares a full life with. Such a thing should be impossible. For so many in this world, it is; the act of surviving takes up so much effort that attention can’t be paid to pleasure or beauty or laughter. What Bill and Frank show us, and what the show argues for its audience, is that paying attention isn’t just a way to show our love — it’s a way to act it, to make a world worth surviving for and in, and to really live.

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